Frances to Gary and William and others... On revisiting the theory of structuralism, its approach to language might begin to make more sense in light of integrationism, but only if structuralism were revised to especially tether grammatic and syntaxic substitutions in narrative discourses. The structure of criminal dramas for example are not all the same simply because they are of the same criminal genre, since the dramas would be altered if the detectives differed as say being rural grandmothers rather than being private investigators or urban policemen; yet structuralism traditionally would posit no consequence to the substitution. It may be that integrationism could accommodate and then account for the difference by blending the overall composition with the alternate substitution. It may indeed be premature for integrationism to abandon structuralism altogether.
On revisiting the theory of subjectivism, the black box of the mature human psyche may be dense in regard to knowing the feeling of things that are sensed and willed and thought in the brain, but that mental darkness is not the cause of linguistic language nor is that mental darkness the effect of linguistic language. The mind in the brain is a preparatory source of language, but language need not necessarily flow from that mind. It may be however that integrationism could account for a universal lingual grammar that emerges out of the mind within certain situations or environments. Such a universe of discourse might be global to say an institution or a nation, by linking its syntactics and semantics and pragmatics, but it could not be global to all contexts or general to all of humanity as integrationism would have it. On languages being used as metasigns to moderate and mediate or expose and reveal the inner psyche there can be little doubt, but to hold that language alone is necessary for these uses or is the original cause of say mental visions is likely wrong. Indeed, even nonhuman organisms like bacterial microbes can be consciously aware with signaling signs, yet without symbolic languages. All new born babies and all old set scientists likely engage in their "nondiscursive" thoughts without any verbal languages whatsoever. In between toddling babies and mathematical scientists, the normal mature minds of ordinary humans however may engage in lingual conduct that actually structures mental acts like visions or notions and their associations and even verbal nominations. This kind of ordinary norm would also frame the limits of integrationism. Gary wrote... Then is structuralism beginning to make more sense, again. Is our Universal Grammar (UG) that Stygian stream below that carries all our meaning or response to linguistic stimuli? Did we become post- too soon, skipping some steps? Do we need to go back and re-do it? William Wrote... The more I think about this the more I'm of the view that language is indeed the necessary function that mediates all conscious imagery and symbols. I'm saying that there's no visual awareness that is not entangled with language and that there's no language that's not visual-spatial. It seems that visual pathways in the brain run through language centers. Any image we see comes pre-packaged with verbalization... not necessarily correct or useful or specific. But the more language and visuality mix up together the more we try to specify what we see with language and the more our seeing prompts language. Can't have one without the other. No such thing as a purely non-verbal conscious experience, image, sensation. What's an exception? Frances wrote... According to the integrationist thesis, all "communicational signs" can be used as "metasigns" which are signs used to signify or codify other signs. The idea of "metasigns" is presumably akin to "meta languages" that are used as tools in many disciplines to talk about referred objects, to include "object languages" or other languages themselves as referred objects. The examples stated on page 100 in the book to show this activity include photographs in a catalogue of pictures, where the photos are "metasigns" showing the depicted pictures; and pictures in a manual of traffic control devices, where the pictures are "metasigns" explaining the installed devices on streets. Now, if all signs are held by integrationism to be only verbal language signs, then nonlingual "devices" like photographs and pictures are not signs, yet they are seemingly held to function as "metasigns" and other nonlingual signs of some kind. In order for the "metasigns" to be integrational signs at all they must be lingual symbols, but in their capacity as codifying "metasigns" these lingual symbols actually function as nonlingual indexes that indicatively point to another sign as its referred object; and if that referred object is held to be a sign, then it also must be a symbolic lingual sign. It would seem that the integrationist thesis has no adequate umbrella typology of signifying devices to account for nonverbal language symbols or for nonlingual devices. If nonlingual devices like photos and symptoms and gestures for example are held to signify and refer and indicate but are not held to be signs, then it is not clear to me just exactly what these moderating and mediating devices indeed are. If the thesis has the goal of holding only mental constructs as signs and then only as the lingual symbols of verbal languages, then this entails that any objects of sense intended to act as signs for able humans must be reduced to symbols, otherwise all objects of sense will remain as other than signs. This approach would deny to nonhumans any signing ability whatsoever, and to signs any objectivity whatsoever. It is ironically a nominalist approach to signs reminiscent of the previous works found in soviet semiotics by its socialist scholars. This loose jargon about "metasigns" and "devices" that appear in the book is merely one of several ambiguities that have surfaced in the thesis.
